These articles are published in the Slough Town FC programme. The Rebels play in the Southern Premier - just seven leagues below the Premier League. I’ve been supporting Slough since the beginning of time despite now living in Brighton. After nearly 14 nomadic years we finally have a brand spanking new home in Slough.

Thursday, February 08, 2018

THE DELUSIONAL GAME

To
be printed in the Southern League Premier Divison game v Banbury
United on Saturday 10th
February 2018

Football
Transfer Deadline Day makes me embarrassed to be a football fan.
While the media turn the most inconsequential story into a moon
landing in the hope of more click-bait, far too many supporters lose
all sense of perspective. After one fan tweeted 'Imagine being 12
points clear at the top of the table and taking that as a sign that
you need to buy another £100m worth of players while Hartlepool and
Chester are going out of business for want of thousands' an angry Man
City replied 'Is it your money that they’re spending? Sane out
injured and we have 3 players fit for our preferred formation of a
front 3. Sterling, Aguero and Silva. So yeah. If he signs it’s
because we need it.' Others pointed out that it wasn't their fault
that Hartlepool and Chester had been mismanaged, as if 'their' clubs
were being run with any financial prudence and wouldn't go bust without
dodgy Sheiks, gangsters and vulture capitalists pumping in the cash.
And while the Premier League is rolling in it, grassroots football
has to contend with mud-baths of pitches and terrible changing
facilities.

As
the authors of 'Jumpers for Goalposts' pointed out football fans are
‘the
marketing mans wet dream. It has become the most one sided
relationship, tantamount to abuse' or as the authors put it being
‘trapped in a loveless marriage with little in common…Football
supporters have become, first and foremost, revenue.’

While
Man United made Alexis Sanchez the highest-paid player in Premier
League history, the club can't quite bring themselves to pay all
their workers the Living Wage. An open letter to the world’s
richest football club, urged them to address the plight of stadium
staff who are “struggling to make ends meet.” This despite a
commitment in 2015 by Premier League clubs to pay the Living Wage to
all permanent staff.

Meanwhile
even FIFA have acknowledged how the agent free-for-all is 'intolerable' with President Infantino,
establishing a working party to examine how the transfer system can
be reformed. Infantino said that he was 'very concerned about the huge
amount of money flowing out of the football industry.' Although
knowing FIFA they're probably more upset they ain't getting a cut.
Uefa
calculated that more than €3bn was paid to agents by Europe’s top
clubs between 2013 and 2017 with clubs telling them that agents are
no longer working on behalf of players to negotiate the best salary
but acting as intermediaries, who have to be paid by clubs for
bringing the players to them. The approach of some agents is: “Look,
you will pay me 50% of the transfer or the player goes somewhere
else.” One agent Fernando Felicevich, declined to comment when
asked if it was true he was asking for £15 million for himself for
Sanchez to agree a move while another agent threatened legal action
if people kept asking questions.

So
it was heartening to see Newcastle United supporters protest against
owner Mike Ashley at St James’ Park with an impressive display
reading “Trust me, one day you will get your club back... He is
only one man, we are a whole city, a whole population...” while
West Ham fans are planning protests against the diamond-geezers that run
their club and have relocated them to a soulless bowl of a stadium.
But apart from the occasional boycott by supporters like Coventry,
Charlton and Blackpool and Man United fans who set up a new club and
built their own ground, most continue to support 'their' team no
matter how badly they are treated or how dodgy their owners.

Maybe
journalist Nick Cohen nailed it 'The fans do not care where the money came from. It is as miserablist to talk about Manchester City's
owners on Match of the Day as to talk about the factory farming of
turkeys at the Christmas lunch table.'

Yes
I know our owners have just butchered political opponents and ripped
off the poor, but without that new billion pound winger we don't
really need, our season and my life will be ruined.